The book is a little vague on it. It seems to indicate that once astrogation check is made, all one needs to do is push a button to immediately jump to hyperspace. Which means most space battles can be negated entirely

Does that seem correct? What happened to the "not like dusting crops" waiting period? I don't want to have to throw in asteroid field or some other obvious plot device if I want to ambush them leaving a planet.

Thoughts?

For the purposes of Edge of the Empire, yes it is that simple.

If you want to make it more "realistic" you can. A lot of freighters will get jump coordinates from the space port control, and they then head out to those points, while doing their nav calculation. For those that are just trying to jump in a rush or don't have those jump point coordinates kind of just jump when and where they want to.

How I envision it is that the navigator will pick a point in space to set as the jump coordinates. This tells the navicomp which way they are going. After the nav calculation is complete the navicomp will give you more information about your jump coordiantes. It will tell you which way to point, your Yaw, Azimuth, and Pitch, and anything I am missing here for three dimensional movement. It would actually tell you the exact second to make the jump to, remember, everything in space is moving... Basically you have to get to an "on ramp" to the hyper lanes. You can decide where your "on ramp" will be, but you have to tell the navicomp so it can calculate your route correctly.

I hate how hyperspace travel/astrogation works in this game. They made it simple and narrative, but I like it more complicated I guess. My players don't mind how it is in the game, so I just run it as it is in the CRB.

Making a blind jump is never advisable. you can jump into a star planet or what not. According to Legends, it can also take your navicomp a long time to track your exact location again as you are in the middle of deep space.

Per the CRB, I don;t know what a blind jump could do.

Hope this helps a little.

Per the CRB, I don;t know what a blind jump could do.

On the Order 66 podcast, they suggested a Despair could land you inside a sun. It's a great way to deal with problematic/epic-level players.

Aside from vaguely suggesting to my players that actively taking fire prevents the navicomputer from calculating (doubly so when taking evasive maneuvers), I usually have my ambushes take place in the planet's gravity well. It adds a little additional book-keeping, since you have to keep track of how far the ship has moved from the planet while also tracking how far away the enemy is.

Does that seem correct? What happened to the "not like dusting crops" waiting period? I don't want to have to throw in asteroid field or some other obvious plot device if I want to ambush them leaving a planet.

You'd have to dig back quite a ways, but there have been quite a few threads on this, especially when EotE first came out. I'm not sure there was much consensus, but I think there was basic agreement that doing a fresh calculation takes some time. The beginner box uses a 6 round countdown, which seems reasonable for a gaming session, going under the assumption that:

a) the PC's ship must be roughly in the area from which it needs to leave

b) the PC's ship must be oriented in the proper real-space direction (which might be difficult if the pilot is also doing Evasive Maneuvers)

c) the PCs are doing the calculation fresh, and

d) they have access to current data, and

e) you want to keep things simple.

You really can make it as complicated as you want though. Hyperspace routes are constantly shifting. A ship with a hyperdrive presumably has storage for the last set of data it downloaded from some central repository. If it doesn't get fresh data, it has to calculate everything on its own, so the older the data in the hyperdrive, the longer the calculation will take...maybe add a round for 1 day, 2 days, 5 days, 10 days, etc., or make things more difficult or add setback to do the calculation faster.

Presumably you can't pre-calculate too far ahead, unless maybe you were planning to make a quick stop and then leave the same day...in that case you could probably do the calculation for the next stop before you land. You'd still have to make it to your departure point and orient the ship in the proper direction though.

On the Order 66 podcast, they suggested a Despair could land you inside a sun. It's a great way to deal with problematic/epic-level players.

This seems rather pointless. I presume the GM would only do this if they wanted everybody to roll new characters, but I'd think there would be better ways to handle that.

On the Order 66 podcast, they suggested a Despair could land you inside a sun. It's a great way to deal with problematic/epic-level players.

This seems rather pointless. I presume the GM would only do this if they wanted everybody to roll new characters, but I'd think there would be better ways to handle that.

Yeah, it was a gag. They were answering a question about what to do with 600+ XP groups and somebody decided what the person was really asking was how to bring the game to an end. One of the GMs recommended waiting for a Despair on a failed Astrogation check to do just that.

The beginner box uses a 6 round countdown...

I remember because due to the totally off the rails manner in which we hit that portion of the adventure we didn't have to contend with any of the Setback Dice suggested for piloting the Krayt Fang (we'd hired T-Rex) and I installed the HMRI and had it warmed up before we broke atmo... so the GM winged it and had us fight the TIEs at the bleeding edge of atmo and then out to "jump range" so we'd get some space fighting in. Which would have destroyed the Krayt Fang had the Beginner Box not been using completely incorrect rules for Starship repair.

But sure, 6 rounds isn't a terrible number.

Ah, my memory is faulty. Honestly though, I find 6 rounds of space combat in this system more than enough. I really only like it for chases and timed goals. Maybe that was my subconscious talking

When I ran that edge beta game I had them make piloting checks to evade the pursuing fighters and they did well enough to be out of their firing range when they jumped out.

The usually correct answer for a despair rolled in an astrogation check is whatever the GM's next adventure requires!

Its just that they're either crashing on the world instead of landing (for some this is pretty much the same thing!) or docking to make repairs before discovering that unlike the Space 1999 episode that graveyard of spaceships is not just dangerous they aren't going to be waiting for the PC's to invite them aboard!

Oh before i forget who makes the astrogation checks in your group?

Ah, my memory is faulty. Honestly though, I find 6 rounds of space combat in this system more than enough. I really only like it for chases and timed goals. Maybe that was my subconscious talking

Astrogation in my group is done by a player who is our computer hacker/medic character. Our pilots typically don't make the check.

I like the idea of houseruling that it takes 6 rounds to (safely) enter hyperspace. They can enter it sooner, but at higher difficulty and more severe penalties for threat and failure.

I like the idea of houseruling that it takes 6 rounds to (safely) enter hyperspace. They can enter it sooner, but at higher difficulty and more severe penalties for threat and failure.

Gotta make the Galaxy Mapper talent meaningful. 6 rounds for everyone and 3 rounds for a Galaxy Mapper. Sounds good to me.

I like the idea of houseruling that it takes 6 rounds to (safely) enter hyperspace. They can enter it sooner, but at higher difficulty and more severe penalties for threat and failure.

Gotta make the Galaxy Mapper talent meaningful. 6 rounds for everyone and 3 rounds for a Galaxy Mapper. Sounds good to me.

Wasn't aware of this talent yet, but yeah if there is something that makes astrogation even better absolutely I'd houserule something like that. Probably exactly that.

None of my players are taking talents like this though. Folks only recently put points into astrogation because they realized just how needed it was.

I used a set number of successes on the mechanic, it took a little over 6 rounds as he failed one or two rolls. I allowed him to use advantage to boost the ship, add a temporary shield to one facing or the other.

I was kind of afraid of this.

Hey Game Writers, there's really only so much Hand-Waving you can do in a game before you're basically not actually gaming anymore, but rather swapping bull stories of the days of futures-never-were. Don't be afraid to write a rule or two.

Having said that, the OP is absolutely right. It takes time to calculate a jump to lightspeed - and a good thing too or frankly most of what happened when the Millenium Falcon tried to escape Tatooine or the Death Star wouldn't have.

So, here's what I propose for a fix.

1) You start the computations for the Jump, this is done either as a Pilot Action or an Action by whomever is Astrogating (co-pilot, astromech droid, over-eager Jawa...whatevs).

2) The Difficulty for the Check is set as it would normally be given the circumstances. But at the same time, a number - I actually prefer 10 because it gives me more elasticity and room to give players little bonuses without knocking over the curve) is put up on the clock.

3) The number of Successes left over after meeting the Difficulty is subtracted on a one for one basis from the 10, and the remainder is the number of Turns you have to wait before the Astrogation Computer goes chunka-chunka-chunka and says its okay to Jump. If Advantages are achieved, they reduce the number of Rounds you have to wait by 2 each instead of 1. If you score a Triumph, you can just jump. If you're cursed with Threats, they add 2 each. Despair means You need to make a Mechanics Check against a Difficulty of 2+the number of Despairs you copped before you can use the Hyperdrive again (the CCR song "Run Through the Jungle" would be appropriate at a time like this...so would Dwayne Eddy's Rebel Rouser).

Failure just means next Round you gotta try the Astrogation Check again and...I dunno...uncross yer eyes this time or whatever...

4) One of the reasons that Astromech Droids are so valuable is that they can store a number of pre-calculated Jumps in their head, and if you're activating one of those pre-calculated Jumps, then once you've double checked the co-ordinates with a quick Astrogation Check (assuming you succeed) then you can just go without any need for waiting.

That's a bare bones mechanic, but one I'd use and modify as needed.

Assuming that droid is actually a PC... if it isn't then what if...

It gets infected by a virus designed to disable it when it tries to download astrogation calculations?

Worse still what if those planned routes aren't the ones its supposed to have?

Sorry for wandering off course there but thought that was worth mentioning, otherwise a very interesting thread... hadn't noticed Galaxy Mapper before reading this!

No, not at all, I think it's always helpful to calculate and speculate. Better we bang it out here in a forum then get caught short lookin' silly because we ain't got the answer at the table, right?

Also, do computer viruses even exist in the Lucas universe?

Also, do computer viruses even exist in the Lucas universe?

It's very much an analog future, and I'm not sure if they ever came up in the EU, but I don't see why there couldn't be.

I don't care what the level of our party is, I'd be pretty pissed if the GM said "You rolled a Despair on your Astrogation check, you come out of hyperspace inside a sun. You're all dead."

I like Corradus's solution.

It makes having astrogation a worthwhile ability when you're trying to escape. Especially if you lack ship firepower or skill to fight in space.